


shenanigans? more like strider-anigans

by rain (meggowo)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Earth C (Homestuck), Fluff and Humor, Future Fic, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Poor Karkat, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, and jake and karkat are the unwilling audience, dave and dirk share a braincell, poor jake, the world is just the strider circus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:40:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27996918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meggowo/pseuds/rain
Summary: Maybe it’ll be fine this time, Karkat had thought, as he watched Dave run excitedly into the hive like his lusus was taking him on a grubdate. He’d been proven wrong almost immediately when Dave had run straight into a piece of plastic nutrition plane that had been taped to the doorframe of the communal block and fallen to the floor, only for Dirk to round the corner, face emotionless.“Strider,” he said, arms crossed across his chest as he looked down at his brother.“Strider,” Dave replied, lounging on the floor as if it was exactly the place he wanted to be.Then they just. Stayed there. Staring at each other for ten minutes.---Or, Karkat struggles with 1) his lack of understanding when it comes to humans, and 2) his lack of understanding when it comes to Striders.
Relationships: Dave Strider & Dirk Strider, Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Jake English & Karkat Vantas, Jake English/Dirk Strider
Comments: 13
Kudos: 90





	shenanigans? more like strider-anigans

Dave and Dirk were singing Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jespen while trying to see how many pickles they could fit into a sleeping Rose’s meal tunnel without waking her up, and Karkat wasn’t quite sure how he’d gotten here. Sure, he could list the chronological events that had led him to existing in this poor excuse of a situation, but the fact of the matter remained that he wasn’t sure how walking into Dirk and Jake’s hive had led to Dave climbing on the arm of the loungeplank like a hungry mammoth scalebeast inspecting its prey, dangling another pickle over his poor, slumbering ectotwin. Jake looked just as lost and concerned as he felt, so at least Karkat wasn’t alone in his complete and utter confusion.

Dave was  _ supposed _ to come alone. Karkat was  _ supposed _ to just be dropping him off. But the minute Jake opened the door with a huge pleading expression, Karkat had known he wasn’t going to be able to leave, curse him and his big, soft blood pusher (stop fucking  _ laughing _ , Dave). Dirk and Dave acted like wigglers who’s thinkpans hadn’t fully developed when they were together, and Jake was most likely still traumatized from their last visit, but that didn’t change the fact that the human owed him. Big time.

_ Maybe it’ll be fine this time _ , Karkat had thought, as he watched Dave run excitedly into the hive like his lusus was taking him on a grubdate. He’d been proven wrong almost immediately when Dave had run straight into a piece of plastic nutrition plane that had been taped to the doorframe of the communal block and fallen to the floor, only for Dirk to round the corner, face emotionless.

“Strider,” he said, arms crossed across his chest as he looked down at his brother.

“Strider,” Dave replied, lounging on the floor as if it was exactly the place he wanted to be.

Then they just. Stayed there. Staring at each other for ten minutes. Jake finally left the room, ducking under the trap, and Karkat followed him, physically unable to witness anymore of this stupidity. Fucking Striders and their fucking stupid shades and irony. Of all things, why did  _ this  _ have to be a universal constant?

Jake sat down on the loungeplank, a cup of scalding leaf fluid on the table beside him, pulling the snuggleplane from the back cushions, and gestured for Karkat to join him. It was weird witnessing him so quiet; when Jake was comfortable around someone it was really hard to shut him up, but Karkat knew it was because he was trying to avoid getting his stupid matesprit’s attention. Fuck, Karkat knew how chaotic it could get if one of them was dragged into whatever shenanigans those two had planned. So he sat down next to Jake, sighing loudly, and shaking his head when the human offered him a side of the snuggleplane.

Fuck humans and their stupid obsession with being pale with anything that moved.

Karkat settled back into the cushions and pulled one of Kanaya’s newest dumbass rainbrow drinker paperbacks out of his sylladex. Might as well get some headway in it before she trolled him again about it. He’d already had a couple of messages from her over the past week ranging from ‘Have You Started My Book Yet?’ to ‘If You Don’t Want To Read It I Won’t Be Offended, Karkat, But I Will Advise You To Avoid Rose For A While If You Do Choose Not To.’ He didn’t fucking care about what Rose thought, but she was probably going to be in and out at some point tonight, so it was easier to just suck it up and read the trashy romance novel. He did have a lot of experience with them.

Jake sipped his leaf juice quietly, pulling out his hideously stupid skulltop and shoving it on his head, and Karkat tried to block his muttering out as he buried his cartilage nub in his novel. It was hard, however, with the whispering that could be heard from the other block. It was a little worrying, though for his own piece of mind Karkat kept himself from investigating. Maybe if they set the hive on fire it would cut their meeting short and Karkat would be allowed to go home early. It was entirely plausible; they tended to share a thinkpan whenever they were in close proximity.

He remembered early on, back when they’d first made their way to the new universe and they were still getting to know each other. He’d been helping Nepeta settle into her new hive (which was still a  _ cave _ , Nepeta, that didn’t change when it was closer to a town) when Jake had called him in a panic. Karkat hadn’t been expecting the anxiety, hadn’t really spoken to the human much, so it’d wound him up fast, and he’d found himself at Jake and Dirk’s hive before he even realized he’d made the decision to leave. Jake had answered the door and they’d both run up the stairs to the flat roof of the enlarged can to find Dirk and Dave on the floor, bruised and whining because they had wanted to make their shoes into ‘heelies’’ (as Dave had whined that they were called) instead of just alchemizing some, and failed. They had taped tiny little wheelplanes (“ _ skateboards,  _ Karkles”) to the bottom of their shoes, somehow thinking that it was a good idea.

Another time, he and Jake had hidden under his bed when they’d met up at he and Dave’s hive while Dave and Dirk played Hatsune Miku at top volume downstairs in the communal block. They’d somehow known all of the words which they had proceeded to yell at the top of their breathbags while sitting stone still and deadpan for over an hour while they played Mario Kart. Karkat could still see the flashing rainbow lights if he closed his lookstubs for long enough.  _ Terrifying. _

There was also that time that Jake had skipped out on him for a human “family dinner” once he’d found out that Rose and Roxy couldn’t make it. He left Karkat to suffer alone while he watched what could’ve been a fun evening making flat grubloaf with cheese (“ _ pizza,  _ Special K, I swear you just do this on purpose”) into Dave and Dirk having a competition to see who could come up with the most disgusting flavour combination imaginable to troll, with Karkat as their unwilling judge. Dave had won with his chocolate-onion grubloaf that he’d doused in enough balsamic reduction and black pepper to feed the Imperial Army, but Karkat still had nightmares about Dirk’s soggy slice of raw dough, soaked in orange juice and eggnog.  _ Ugh.  _ Did  _ all  _ humans have such abominable eating habits?

Rose walked into the block, pulling Karkat (thankfully) from his thoughts, and without a word layed down on the other loungeplank and passed the fuck out.

“Mood.” Jake mumbled to himself, before going back to whatever it was that he was doing.  _ Mood indeed. _

Rose snored in the corner. Ignorant to the shit that the Striders were about to pull on her.

  
  


After Dave and Dirk tired of bothering Rose, they forced Jake and Karkat to the kitchen with them, proclaiming, deadpan as always behind their stupid fucking shades, that it was time for a ‘motherfucking tea party’, forget the fact that Dirk apparently didn’t even like the stuff.

“Wait… what?” Jake looked surprised when Karkat looked over at him. “I’m tempted to wake up your sister and get her to force you to take that back, Buster!”

Dirk’s cheeks coloured a little, and Karkat hid a smirk behind his hand. Leave it to Jake to do next to nothing to distract himself from the stupid front he put up in front of Dave.

“Well, I mean, the liquid was okay, so I liked some of it?”

Jake’s face dropped faster than the watermelon Dave had dropped from the roof last month. He looked like he knew what was coming, but he desperately didn’t want to hear it, so he just didn’t respond.

Karkat should’ve known better than to question it. Humans were weird but Dirk was  _ weirder,  _ if it was causing Jake to look like he regretted ever setting foot on Earth C, he didn’t want to know.

_ Fuck,  _ he was curious though.

Ugh.

“What the fuck is there other than the liquid in leaf fluid?” Maybe it was something normal. Maybe some humans drank it differently from other humans.  _ Please have a fucking decent explination. Fuck. _

Dirk looked at Karkat, confused, and Karkat knew he’d made a mistake. “The tea bag! What else would there be?”

Karkat slowly looked past Dirk, concern and horror steadily rising, to see Dave losing his mind desperately trying to keep his laughter silent. 

Jake opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times, his expression heavily pained. “Darling?”

Dirk flushed at the pet name. “Yeah, what’s up, babe?”

Jake looked absolutely devastated. “You’re not supposed to eat the tea bag, dear.”

Dirk’s face went carefully blank behind his shades, and Dave started howling with laughter.

_ What the fuck? _

“You eat the  _ mesh bag?” _

“You  _ don’t?” _

Karkat couldn’t believe what he was hearing.  _ Fuck,  _ those two were stupid but at least Dave would never-

“ _ Dude,  _ you’re supposed to cut the bag open first!”  _ No- “ _ Don’t eat the fucking mesh!”

Jake met his eyes and smirked as if Dave being a dumbass as well was some small victory over him, and Karkat sighed. 

Fuck Striders.  _ Fuck. _

**Author's Note:**

> come scream at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/xsunshowerx)!!!
> 
> (also i made a [kofi](https://ko-fi.com/rainsmith), so if you enjoyed this or any of my other work and would like to support me, i would really appreciate it!)


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